The Value Proposition Canvas: check that your offer fits what customers actually need
Many new offers are good answers to questions nobody asked. The team describes features, the customer cares about something else, and both sides only notice after launch. The Value Proposition Canvas makes the match explicit. It was developed by Alexander Osterwalder and colleagues at Strategyzer, as a zoom into two blocks of the Business Model Canvas, and described in Value Proposition Design (2014) by Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda and Alan Smith. One side describes the customer, the other your offer, and the question is whether they fit.
The two sides
| Customer profile | Value map |
|---|---|
| Customer jobs: what the customer is trying to get done, at work or in life. Functional, social and emotional jobs. | Products and services: what you offer that helps with those jobs. |
| Pains: what annoys them before, during or after the job, what stands in the way, what they fear. | Pain relievers: how your offer removes or reduces specific pains. |
| Gains: the outcomes and benefits they want, including ones they would be surprised by. | Gain creators: how your offer produces specific gains. |
Fit means that your pain relievers and gain creators address pains and gains that matter to the customer. Not every pain, and not every gain: the ones that matter most.
Working with the canvas in four steps
- Start with the customer profile. One customer segment. Write jobs, pains and gains from interviews and observation. An empathy map is a good way to prepare this.
- Rank them. Which jobs are most important, which pains most severe, which gains most wanted? The top of each list is what the offer has to address.
- Then fill in the value map. Products and services, then for each a pain reliever or gain creator. Every reliever and creator should point to a specific pain or gain on the other side.
- Check the fit and test it. Ticks where the two sides meet, and gaps where a top pain has no reliever. The ticks are assumptions until customers confirm them: put the riskiest on an assumption map and test them.
Start on the customer side, always. Teams that start with the value map tend to describe the customer they need rather than the one they have.
Where it goes wrong
- Features instead of jobs. "Wants an app" is not a customer job. "Wants to know before Friday whether the order is complete" is.
- Too many segments on one canvas. Different segments have different jobs. One profile per segment.
- Relievers for pains nobody ranked. An offer that removes small pains well and leaves the biggest one untouched does not fit.
- Fit on paper only. A full canvas is a set of hypotheses. Fit is shown when customers behave as if the offer matters to them.
The Value Proposition Canvas is copyright Strategyzer AG (strategyzer.com). This article describes the method for educational purposes and does not reproduce the canvas. IdeaHone does not offer it as a tool: Strategyzer allows its use in software only with their permission. To work with it, use the official template from strategyzer.com. For a similar look at the customer in IdeaHone, use the empathy map or the Lean Canvas.
Run the workshop. IdeaHone keeps the record.
While you facilitate, IdeaHone turns what is said into ideas, questions and decisions on a shared board, with who said it. Nobody writes the minutes afterwards.
What is the Value Proposition Canvas?
A tool by Strategyzer for checking whether an offer fits what customers need. The customer profile describes their jobs, pains and gains; the value map describes products and services, pain relievers and gain creators. Fit is reached when the offer addresses the jobs, pains and gains that matter most.
Who created the Value Proposition Canvas?
Alexander Osterwalder and the team at Strategyzer. It is described in Value Proposition Design (2014) by Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda and Alan Smith.
How does the Value Proposition Canvas relate to the Business Model Canvas?
It zooms into two blocks of the Business Model Canvas: customer segments, which become the customer profile, and value proposition, which becomes the value map.
What is the difference between the Value Proposition Canvas and an empathy map?
An empathy map describes one person in detail: what they say, think, do and feel. The Value Proposition Canvas focuses on the jobs, pains and gains that matter for an offer and puts the offer next to them to check the fit. Many teams use an empathy map to prepare the customer profile.
